Gospel of Bender
by grandvizier527
Summary: Bender had never paid much thought to that Jesus fellow; some meatbags apparently worshipped Him in the past or something. But when a Planet Express mission goes awry, the robot finds himself transported to His time and learns a few things. Trigger warning: Jesus is portrayed as divine. Don't like don't read and whatnot.
1. In time

It was a regular day at the Planet Express. Of course, 21st century standards of "regular" don't quite describe the 31st century. So you could also say it was an unusual day. The crew minus Farnsworth, Scruffy and Hermes were gathered around the TV watching Everybody loves Hypnotoad.

"Isn't it great how we can all gather around the TV and enjoy a show together, like a family?" Zoidberg suggested to the group. "It harkens back to Fry's century, when the television was first invented, and…"

"Can it, Zoidberg! Can't you see we're busy trying to bask in the glory of Hypnotoad?" Leela replied.

"Well, we can always watch something else," Fry suggested. "I mean, this IS a rerun, after all!" Bender immediately snatched the remote.

"All My Circuits, here we come!" the robot cried with delight, but before he could press the button and change the channel the remote was suddenly shot with a green blast of energy.

"Good news, everyone!" Farnsworth declared. "You get to use the time machine for today's delivery!"

"How is it good news when you fry the TV remote?" Bender cried, getting a second one out of his torso compartment. He always made sure to keep spares.

"Because the weapon I fried it with is a plasma pistol!" The Professor informed him. "These weapons were used by the Covenant in the Human-Covenant war. Don't you people know anything about history?"

"Who were the Covenant?" Fry asked Leela.

"There are some video games that explain it well. They're very historically accurate!" Leela replied. "But Professor, wouldn't we be messing up history by helping them? And how would they ask us for weapons if they lived before us?"

"Stop with your questioning, Leela. Your youthful, feminine mind wouldn't be able to comprehend it!"

"In that case, my dumb masculine mind wouldn't be able to either! Let's just go and get it over with!" Fry suggested.

"No way! All My Circuits is way more important than helping aliens kill meatbags!" Bender declared.

"Did you really just say that, Bender?" Amy asked. "This seems like a moral conflict for you."

"Gah, you're right for once, Amy! Watch Calculon, or kill all humans? Watch Calculon, or kill all humans? Watch Calculon…"

"You know this is a rerun, too," Leela pointed out. "Calculon's dead." Bender gasped at her words.

"Calculon's not dead! He's just…missing in action! He'll turn up one day!"

"What are you talking about, you saw him die, remember?" Leela reminded him. "Could you just come along with us?"

"No way! I, uh, I don't remember what happens in this episode!" Bender protested.

"We could just record it," Amy suggested.

"Or perhaps I could take the place of the robutt, hmm?" Zoidberg offered. He was met by an angry glare from Leela's sole eye.

"NO."

"Fine, I'll go! Thanks a lot, Professor, you know I hate doing stuff!"

"Well, too bad! You're a robot, you don't have a choice! Also, stop hoping Calculon will return! The dead don't come back to life, for any reason!"

"But weren't you the one that brought back-?" Fry began.

"That didn't count! Now just do your job! I promise I'll pay you this time!" Farnsworth insisted.

"No money is enough to make me go!" Bender declared. "I'm not taking your bribes!"

"What if the bribe came in the form of beer and fembots?" the Professor asked.

Bender groaned, knowing that he couldn't resist. "Ok, I'll go!" This left Amy and Zoidberg alone together.

"So, Amy, it seems that fate has brought us together again," Zoidberg said. Amy mistook his friendly tone for a flirtatious one.

"You know…I haven't been paying as much attention to you as I should have," Amy admitted.

"Perhaps we could go back to my dumpster, maybe? We have so much catching up to do, despite having worked together for years now," Zoidberg told her.

"Why not? It's not like Kif is around."

. . . . .

The time machine was much smaller than Fry had remembered it being, having room only for one person at a time. Hermes was also there, standing behind some sort of instrument panel.

"You'll each have to go in individually," he told them. "I'll send ya to the right time. We'll get the weapons in last. Now, this time portal is also a space portal, so if I do this right you should end up on the homeworld of the Sanghelli."

"Wait, why are you manning the time machine and not the Professor?" Leela asked.

"Time and space displacement is a very orderly process. Only an orderly person such as myself could possibly do it correctly. You can't just enter in some numbers and expect to get exactly what ya want!" Hermes insisted.

"Now off you go!" Farnsworth said, shoving Leela into the time machine's chamber despite his lack of strength. Hermes pressed a few buttons and she disappeared.

"This did send her to where we're going, right? I mean, you didn't mess up, did you?" Fry asked Hermes nervously.

"Oh, no, Fry! A buearecrat like me never makes mistakes!" Hermes reassured him. "Now in ya go!" he said, shoving Fry into the time machine.

"You know considering all the times I've been warped around time and space, I've learned that—ah!" Fry disappeared before he could say anything. Bender went in next.

"You know, I should be more positive about this. I mean, I get to kill some meatbags!" Bender said. "Make sure you get those weapons with me. I might need to use a few on my way to the Covenant!"

As Hermes was typing in the coordinates for the time and place Bender was supposed to warp to, Scruffy ended with his floating washbucket.

"Shoo, Scruffy! We're manipulating the fabric of time and space right now, and possibly altering history! Can't you come and clean later?" Farnsworth demanded.

"Can't," Scruffy explained. "I must clean where I am called to."

"Go away, ya scrub-monkey!" Hermes cried, waving his arms to shoo Scruffy away. In doing so he briefly brushed the panel managing the time machine with his coat. Farnsworth went over and pressed the button to send Bender off as Hermes chased Scruffy out of the room.

"Wait, Professor, did you check…" but before Bender could finish he was gone.

"Stupid Scruffy. Now let's send the weapons. It's a good thing you don't make mistakes, right Hermes?" said the Professor.

"Great Avatar of Madagascar! I made a mistake!" Hermes cried. "Bender's not going 2552—he's goin' to AD 02!"


	2. Into Bethlehem

Bender opened his eye visors to observe the strange world that he found himself in. All around him he saw nothing but sand and dust, with a bright sun shining down from a cloudless sky. Meatbags, Bender mused, would be really taken in by this scene, but he wasn't impressed by scenery. He was a robot, after all.

"Jeez, those Sanghelli sure live in a dump! Hey, Fry, Leela, did the Professor send you guys any of those human-tracking devices? Use'em on somebody other than yourselves so we can find some civilization! And a good brewery while you're at it!" But seconds later Bender realized that Fry and Leela weren't with him. Instantly his CPU made the connection: Hermes—or maybe it was the Professor?—clearly made a mistake and sent him somewhere else.

Bender punched the earth with his powerful metal hand, not out of anger but to grab a handful of dirt.

"Good thing I didn't throw away that stupid "dating software"! It didn't help me attract fembots, so it must have meant the _other _kind of dating," Bender said aloud. He wouldn't normally talk so frequently to himself, except that no one else was around to hear his glorious voice. Or even bite his shiny metal ass.

The results of the date came back in seconds. A number shot embedded itself in Bender's brain: A great big 2.

"Holy crap, a two?!" Bender cried. Robots were usually only comfortable with ones and zeros. Bender remembered hearing his co-workers use some dumb imaginary numbers, but surely those were just figments of their primitive organic, carbon-based imagination. There was no such thing as a 2. And yet it was here before him, with a curious looking C and E trailing it.

"2CE? Wait…Oh…that's a year! Huh. Didn't know they went back far, to having only just one number instead of four. Wait, wasn't four imaginary?" Bender was too confused about the subject to think about it deeply, so he ultimately conceded to accepting the human's mythological numbers for the sake of clarity.

"So I'm back a few thousand years, huh? Eh, no problem! I'll just use that code the nudist aliens gave me! What was it…010101010101? No…001001110001010101010010101001? No…don't tell me I can't remember! Oh, wait, now I do! 0—no, wait, that code only goes to the past. Guess I'll just have to wait this one out. For a looong time." And so Bender began his journey.

Where he was going didn't matter. What he would do wouldn't matter, either. So long as he found a civilization, even if it was just a bunch of humans (and it had to be since robots didn't exist yet) he would just have to find some way to occupy his time. And so Bender walked. And walked, and walked. He came across a giant, salt-filled lake and some mountains, but these didn't interest him, so he moved on.

Finally, after an undetermined amount of time, he came across a hill. Finally he began seeing grass and these bleating creatures. Apparently the humans called them "sheep", but Bender could care less. Not like there were many of them in 3014 anyway. As the sun began to set Bender found a fig tree on the top of the grassy hill and sat down in its shade for a nap. He didn't actually _need_ a nap, but he figured that if he was living in a time full of humans and no robots than it wouldn't hurt to copy some of their practices. As he settled down under the fig tree he caught the attention of a few shepherds, who were utterly terrified and confused at the strange metal man that stood before them. Bender looked their way and gave them a nod.

"Hey. Bender Bending Rodriguez. Nice to meet ya! Well, not really nice, but it's nice to see _something _after miles of wilderness!" Bender stretched out a hand in greeting, but the shepherds stared at him, frightened. One started babbling in some dumb, incomprehensible language, and the others looked back at him and their sheep, their heads bobbing to look at the robot, the sheep, and to his left at something or other. It was amusing to Bender how their necks twisted at the slightest movement; not like robots who could just rotate their heads to look at whatever they wanted. Speaking of which, why did those meatbags do that, anyway? Bender looked to his left and stretched out his eyes. Not far away from the hill was a small city. It didn't look anything like what Bender was used to—certainly no New New York, but it qualified as a civilization. Bender was filled with relief, and began bounding down the hill into the city, much to the fright of the shepherds. Not that Bender cared. Amidst their babblings, Bender could make out some vague word that translated into his CPU as "Bethlehem," but otherwise their language was so old that his language-recognizing software didn't recognize it. What was the point, after all, of wasting memory knowing dead languages like French? Memories of that thing the Professor made that could only translate into that made Bender smile.

"Wait, what? Who cares what the professor did years ago? Or, millennia in the future, in my case? I've finally found…Bethlehem, is that what those guys said? Eh, I'll just call it that. Let's see if they have a brewery or a vineyard or something…"


	3. Aftermath of the disappearance

Back on the Planet Express, Fry and Leela had just returned from their mission. They strangely found the time travel room empty.

"Weird, there's no one in the transporter room—I mean the transportalizer room—I mean the time travel room! Place!" Fry struggled to correct himself but wasn't quite sure what this place was called.

"It's ok, I get it wrong all the time. I think the Professor insists on calling it the 'time and space conversion room'. Speaking of Star Trek, you know…after making out with a younger William Shatner, I have to say I find him a bit overrated." Fry nearly gasped.

"How…can you possibly say that about…the greatest overactor…in the world?!" Fry said, trying to emulate Captain Kirk by asking a question in the form of a dramatic speech. Leela chuckled.

"Fry, sometimes I really just don't know what I saw in you," she said sweetly. The two were about to kiss when Fry realized:

"Hey, wait? Where's Bender? Usually he'd have jerked me away from you to make me go do something with him right about now!"

"Yeah, you're right," Leela concurred. "Where is that rascally robot? Wait, did I just say 'rascally' in all seriousness?"

"You sure did!" Fry remarked. "But come to think of it, I didn't see Bender during our delivery of the Covenant weapons. Maybe something happened and Bender ended up somewhere else in the time period?"

"Well, if he did, he'd know how to get back home, right?"

"Yeah, that fancy binary code that can send him through time could fix that!"

"Oh, yeah, thank God for that. So I guess we'll see Bender watching All My Circuits right where he left off," Leela hypothesized. As the two were about to open the door to leave the transportation room, Leela asked, "Could you believe that the time machines were so cheap back then?" Fry would have responded had he not opened the door and seen the Professor staring at him in the face.

"Gah! Professor, don't scare us like that! If this is your idea of a Halloween prank, then you're a few months early!"

"Oh, wasn't that that festival where you warded off evil spirits, or had it become a candy-grabbing holiday in your time? Either way, that's not why I'm here. You know I can't remember dates on the calendar! I'm here to tell you all while I can that Bender is…gone."

"Oh, so he hasn't come back yet?" Fry asked. The Professor shook his head.

"It's worse than that. You see, Scruffy came in and messed things up when Hermes and I were operating the transporter. Bender was sent to a completely different time, far in the past. Roughly 3000 years in the past. 2 AD, to be exact."

"So, he can just use that time travel code to get back here, right?" Fry asked.

"No! Don't you remember the details of that special four episode long movie?! The code can only send him into the past! He can't go into the future!"

"But couldn't he just go back into the past so far that he ends up at the end of time? You know, like when we went really far forward in time to find a time machine that could go back but just ended up going in a loop…twice?" Farnsworth shook his head again.

"No, that won't work either, Fry. You can only go through time in a loop forwards, not backwards! Don't ask why, it's genuine time travel science! Anyway, even if Bender were to remember the code and go back, he'd just reach a dead end once he got to the creation of the universe. Bender's only option is to wait it out. Thank goodness he's a robot!"

"But won't it take him long to get back, right? Centuries through time is like a few minutes to us! Right? Right?" Fry asked, worry and dread rising in his voice. Leela held his hand when she saw the Professor's expression, knowing what was coming.

"I don't know, Fry. Remember how when the three of us—well, not you, Leela, I mean Bender, Fry, and myself—went through that other time machine? It took us years in our own time to find a way to get home. By that point, according to the calculations I made and kept hidden from you both, Leela and the others had aged by about 45 years. And since Bender is about 3000 years back in time, it could take him, well…that same amount of time to catch up to us, or maybe a little less. Or maybe a little more. I think the time code was a special exception to that time-traveling rule."

"So what you're saying is…?" Fry stammered, tears welling in his eyes.

"Bender's gone," Leela finished, squeezing his hand tightly. Fry broke into tears, burying his head into her shoulder. She added to the professor, "Thanks for telling us this. Are you sure there's nothing we can do?" as she asked this, Fry bolted out of the room in tears, ignoring the fact that Zoidberg and Amy were making out on the couch.

"I just don't know, Leela. Hermes and I would have to pinpoint his exact location in time and space…and he could be anywhere in the universe. I suppose I could start looking, though. A 40% silicon-based lifeform in AD 2 shouldn't be too hard to find. But the whole universe would have to be searched. You and Fry can help out with that tomorrow."

"Thanks. Wait, what about Scruffy? Didn't you say he was the one responsible for this?" Leela raised her voice in anger when she added, "Why would he do something like this to Fry?!"

"I'm not sure what was going through his crazy head. But rest assured, Leela, I already have Hermes pressing charges against him for involuntary manslaughter. In the meantime, keep Fry from getting at him in some silly vigilante fashion until we can properly bring him to justice." Farnsworth then left the room, and Leela followed to join Fry back at his apartment.

"It's not the same without Bender…" Fry wailed when Leela came over to spend the night. Given what had just happened, she figured that Fry needed some company. She just sat on the side of Bender's metal bed, ready to hand Fry some tissues or just say some reassuring words. After a few minutes, Fry finally sobbed to sleep, and Leela got up and proceeded to leave. On her way home, she looked out at the stars above her, trying to guess which one Bender was near.

"Bender, where are you?" she whispered.


	4. The glowing mafia humans

Weeks passed in both timelines. Days after Bender's disappearance, Farnsworth reported the incident to the police. Such space-time accidents had happened before, and the law on the books was that if the victim of the accident could not be recovered and sent back to the present after all means had been exhausted, then the perpetrator could be charged with murder by the prosecution. Given the circumstances, Farnsworth was compelled to have Smitty and URL come over to arrest Scruffy right away. It would be a month until his court date, Planet Express was told. Farnsworth, Hermes, Leela and Fry had all agreed to testify against him at his trial, but until then the search for Bender was on. Leela and Fry continuously volunteered to go back into the time and space transporter, going back to 2 AD and asking everyone on nearly every planet they could find; no one had seen or heard of Bender, let alone the concept of a robot. They didn't bother to look at Earth first; of the billions of planets in the 31st century known to have life, why would Bender be on theirs? But it soon came to just that.

"Well, we only have one option left; Earth. Get ready to start going through the regions of the ancient world! We'll start with the Roman Empire," Farnsworth said. Hermes stepped forward and typed in some coordinates, but when he was ready to transport Leela and Fry to another place in time nothing happened. Hermes tried it again, but still nothing. A third time, and still nothing.

"It seems to be a bit glitched. The transporter won't let ya go any place on Earth during this time period! Awfully strange."

"Sorry, guys," Farnsworth said to Fry and Leela as they got out of the transporter room. "We'll try and have it fixed sometime before Scruffy's demise—I mean conviction!" Leela followed Fry out the door, who was looking quite somber and was evidently trying to hide his emotions.

"Fry, look, this isn't the end. Bender's out there, somewhere in time. The Professor will get it fixed and—"

"That's all right, Leela. I can find a new best friend."

. . . . .

Bender couldn't quite recall how it had happened, but he now had an angry mob after him. One thing had led to another, he thought, as his metal legs pounded against the dirt and cobblestone roads of the city. Before this he had been living in Bethlehem comfortably: taking what he wanted without people noticing, making short work of Roman legions and local law enforcement to establish a degree of superiority among the humans, and deliberately acting lazy afterwards so that people would drop their guard—and then the cycle would repeat itself. But tonight he had bitten off more than he could chew.

Normally he wouldn't be caught dead running away from a bunch of meatbags, but having dozens of angry people yelling at him all the time would get on his nerves if he stuck around longer. What had started as a simple theft of wheat to ferment some beer inside himself had gotten the whole town up in arms as he had fled from house to house, hoping to snatch whatever he could that looked valuable. If he preserved these things in his chest compartment and waited until it was the year 3000, he could sell his stuff for tons of money due to its age! Some old archaeologist or anthropologist would probably kill for all the stuff he get from this time period!

The townspeople chased Bender out of Bethlehem completely, not satisfied until he returned to the familiar hill with the shepherds outside the city. Now it was night, and due to this time period's lacking electric lights, Bender could see the stars shining above him, and one in particular seemed to shine very brightly. Bender's eyes could just barely make out movement from the star, so perhaps it was a comet of some sort.

"Neat," Bender declared, withdrawing a cigarette he had stored in his chest compartment. After the chase, he wanted to relax a little. Waving to the shepherds (who by this point were used to him and ignored him due to the language barrier) he went over to the fig tree that had stayed there for all the months he had been here and watched the star ever so slowly moving. Well, actually it was moving a bit faster now. And getting brighter, too!

Suddenly the star seemed to be right over Bethlehem itself, and a bright light shone in the sky, but something about it made it seemed confined to just the hill Bender and the shepherds were on. Before Bender could make some snarky remark, a glowing human in white clothes appeared from the light and promptly duplicated itself.

"Uh, guys, is this a regular thing?" Bender asked the shepherds. Judging from their expressions, they were terrified, too. Turning to the glowing humans, he asked, "So are you guys some sort of law enforcement people? Or more of those Romans? Look, if I had known what kind of magical flying and glowing powers you had, I wouldn't have taken all that stuff! That is what you want, right? Cuz' I'd be willing to split the cut between you and you and you…" The glowing human in the center smiled and shook his head before the group announced, not just to Bender but also to the shepherds:

"Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace to those with whom He has pleased."

"Oh, so is that what this is about?" Bender asked. He had no idea what these beings wanted, but he figured that maybe he could reason with them. "Peace to 'those with whom He is pleased'?" But then the angels vanished. The shepherds were talking amongst themselves, Bender could hear, but he was more interested in who these glowing humans were.

"So…uh, flying humans? Do you want me to give the stuff back? Look, you can tell your boss if he wanted a cut he could have just asked. Here's some stuff I don't need; a little gold, and some rocks that my scanners claimed smelled nice—I kinda thought they were a drug or something and I could make big bucks selling them in my time—and a jug of this weird oil. The people freaked out when I took it, so I figured it must be good for something." Bender took his 3 gifts and buried them underneath the fig tree—he didn't want anyone besides the glowing mafia humans from before finding them. After all, since he was going to be in their time period, he might as well get on their good side. After burying the gifts Bender decided it would be best to leave.

"This place is getting too weird for me. Bye, sheep-raising meatbags!" but the shepherds had already gone into Bethlehem.


End file.
